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Scientists have found the first evidence of plastic contamination in freshwater fish in the Amazon, highlighting the extent to which bags, bottles and other waste dumped in rivers is affecting the world’s wildlife. Tests on the stomach contents of fish in Brazil’s Xingu River, one of the major tributaries of the Amazon, revealed plastic particles in more than 80% of the species examined, including the omnivorous parrot pacu, herbivorous redhook silver dollar, and meat-eating red-bellied piranha.

Two divers came across a spectacular site while swimming off the coast of New Zealand. They discovered a giant creature, likely a pyrosome, gently floating in the waters. While these floating colonies have been known to get caught in fishing nets, a specimen this large is an uncommon site.

Humpback whales, once hunted around the world to the point that they became so rare that the industry built on their blubber went belly-up, is booming. The world's largest population passes through Australia's Kimberley, a region that provides ideal and undeveloped calving grounds, researchers say. Since the whaling stations were closed, humpbacks that visit Western Australia have become the good news story that defies the trend of environmental doom and gloom.

Lobster fishers catch fewer market-sized lobsters, and see fewer fertile females, in areas close to fish farms in Nova Scotia, according to new research led by Inka Milewski, a research associate at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Lobster fishers working in Port Mouton Bay, Nova Scotia, keep detailed records of when and where they fish and how many lobsters they catch.

The planet’s coral reefs are in trouble. Thanks to warming and acidifying oceans, the animals that make up coral reefs are dying, turning the reefs themselves into algae-covered ghost towns. This represents a loss of habitat for numerous nearby creatures, many of which evolved to only live in the reefs. So the deaths of the corals can lead to the deaths of many other species. From monitoring the reefs by listening to them to local action and working to understand the dynamics of coral illness, scientists and conservationists...

As if humans weren’t already doing enough to destroy the planet and harm our fellow creatures, a new study has revealed that human-caused noise is hindering the ability of dolphins to communicate with one another.
Dolphins ― highly intelligent and social animals ― use a complex array of whistle calls to talk to each other that some scientists have compared to human speech.

If you think Charleston, South Carolina, has plenty of history within its pre-Colonial grounds, just look at what’s been hiding 160 miles off the city’s coast for thousands of years: a giant deep-sea coral reef system. The chief scientist who helped make the discovery called it unbelievable.

A robot submarine able to hunt and kill the predatory crown-of-thorns starfish devastating the Great Barrier Reef was unveiled by Australian researchers on Friday. Scientists at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) said the robot, named the RangerBot and developed with a grant from Google, would serve as a "robo reef protector" for the vast World Heritage site off Australia's northeastern coast.

Wild dolphins have learned how to walk on water by copying tricks developed by captive animals, a 30-year study found. Scientists in Australia observed that dolphins in Adelaide learned tail-walking – when the animal rises vertically out of the water and moves forward or backwards across it – from a dolphin called Billie which had spent time in a dolphinarium. Dolphins rarely do this in the wild but it is a standard part of the routine in almost all dolphinaria.

Since 2015, we've been following the story of Boyan Slat, a young inventor who set out to fight against the world's plastic pollution problem. At only 20 years old, he developed an invention aimed at tackling the world's largest patch of garbage, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This vortex of trash, located between California and Hawaii, covers 600,000 square miles of ocean and is responsible for countless animal deaths.

It has people, and its people call it Big. And doesn’t everyone who is fawned over and photographed like a celebrity have people? Not Mr. Big, as in “Sex and the City,” or Big Daddy or Big Mama, as in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” And not Biggie, like Biggie Smalls, the Notorious B.I.G. Just Big.

A year after the population of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales suffered devastating losses, Canadian officials say measures taken this season to protect the species have worked. With the summer fishing season in the Gulf of St. Lawrence drawing to a close, the federal Fisheries Department confirmed Friday that not one whale has died as a result of a ship strike or fishing gear entanglement — the main causes for most of the deaths last season.

After decades of damning reports, bleak images, and depressing headlines, one new report claims to have a “positive update” on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The Reef & Rainforest Research Centre (RRRC), a non-profit organization, has published a report for the Queensland State Government that claims parts of the GBR are showing some “signification signs” of recovery from years of bleaching.

Few conservation issues generate as emotional a response as whaling. Are we now about to see countries killing whales for profit again? Commercial whaling has been effectively banned for more than 30 years, after some whales were driven almost to extinction. But the International Whaling Committee (IWC) is currently meeting in Brazil and next week will give its verdict on a proposal from Japan to end the ban.

An unusual visitor has been hanging out in the St. Lawrence River for the past three years: A narwhal, more than 1,000 kilometres south of its usual range. But the lone narwhal is not alone — it appears he has been adopted by a band of belugas. The narwhal — thought to be a juvenile male because of its half-metre-long tusk — was filmed in July playing among a pod of young belugas, thought to be mostly or all males.

A scientific mission into the secret ocean lair of California’s great white sharks has provided tantalizing clues into a vexing mystery — why the fearsome predators spend winter and spring in what has long appeared to be an empty void in the deep sea. A boatload of researchers from five scientific institutions visited the middle-of-nowhere spot between Baja California and Hawaii this past spring on a quest to learn more about what draws the big sharks to what has become known as the White Shark Cafe, almost as if they were pulled by some astrological stimulus.

A trial is underway to restore damaged coral on the Great Barrier Reef using electricity. The reef has been severely assaulted in recent years by cyclones and back-to-back heatwaves. Nathan Cook at conservation group Reef Ecologic and his colleagues are attempting to regrow surviving coral fragments on steel frames. The frames are placed on damaged parts of the reef and stimulated with electricity to accelerate the coral’s growth (see video).

The seafloor is one of the last unexplored regions of our watery planet. On a recent expedition dubbed Deep Search 2018, a group of ocean researchers discovered 85 miles of deep-sea coral reef off the coast of the southeastern US. "Good news is too rare these days, and this is a victory that we can all share. We have found a pristine coral reef in our own backyard," Erik Cordes, the chief scientist on the expedition and a deep-sea ecologist at Temple University, wrote in a mission summary.

Crabs and lobsters have a tough time at the hands of humans. In most countries, they are excluded from the scope of animal welfare legislation, so nothing you do to them is illegal. The result is that they are treated in ways that would clearly be cruel if inflicted on a vertebrate. This might in part be because they are so alien to us. It is hard to begin to imagine the inner life of a 10-legged, faceless creature with a nervous system distributed throughout its body. Worse still, crustaceans lack the headline-grabbing intelligence of the octopus.

At least half of the world’s killer whale populations are doomed to extinction due to toxic and persistent pollution of the oceans, according to a major new study. Although the poisonous chemicals, PCBs, have been banned for decades, they are still leaking into the seas. They become concentrated up the food chain; as a result, killer whales, the top predators, are the most contaminated animals on the planet.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Manta rays strain their tiny food from mouthfuls of seawater in a novel way that could hold the key to better filtration in a variety of commercial applications, new research by Oregon State University shows. Published today in Science Advances, the findings explain that manta rays filter zooplankton, mesoplankton and microcrustaceans with an apparatus different from anything previously seen in any biological or industrial system.

Plastic advertising balloons that blow away to sea are killing seabirds, seals and other wildlife, campaigners have warned. Despite being sold as "biodegradable", the freebies handed out at local fetes and by big restaurant brands are often blown away miles to the coast. "Dolphins, whales, turtles, seabirds and other animals have been killed by balloons," a Marine Conservation Society spokesman told Sky News. "Animals swallow the balloons which can block their gut, causing them to starve.

Sea turtles have more than a one in five chance of dying after ingesting a single piece of plastic, a study by CSIRO researchers reveals. Scientists analysed almost 1000 washed-up turtles on Australian beaches and found a direct link between the amount of plastic consumed and the demise of the marine animal.

Earlier this week, Squire was with a group of people surveying the damage at the Indian Pass Campground in Port Saint Joe, Florida, when they came upon the struggling dolphin on the beach of Saint Vincent Sound.Wasting no time, Squire jumped into action and the ocean to pull the dolphin out from under a boat ramp’s edge where it was lodged.

The UK government has thrown its weight behind the creation of the world’s biggest environmental sanctuary, covering a huge swathe of the Antarctic ocean. The massive 1.8m sq km reserve – five times the size of Germany – would ban all fishing in a vast area of the Weddell Sea and parts of the Antarctic peninsula, safeguarding species including penguins, killer whales, leopard seals and blue whales.

An autonomous starfish-killing robot is close to being ready for trials on the Great Barrier Reef, researchers say. Crown-of-thorns starfish have have been described as a significant threat to coral. The Cotsbot robot, which has a vision system, is designed to seek out starfish and give them a lethal injection. After it eradicates the bulk of starfish in a given area, human divers can move in and mop up the survivors.

When one of Earth's smartest creatures vocalizes, it fuels a heated debate among scientists: Are dolphins actually speaking a complex language? Head trainer Teri Turner Bolton looks out at two young adult male dolphins, Hector and Han, whose beaks, or rostra, are poking above the water as they eagerly await a command.

The US Navy has agreed to limit its use of sonar that may inadvertently harm whales and dolphins in waters near Hawaii and California. A federal judge in Honolulu signed the deal between the Navy and environmental groups on Monday. It restricts or bans the use of mid-frequency active sonar and explosives used in training exercises. Campaigners say that sonar disrupts the feeding of marine mammals, and can even cause deafness or death.

You'll have heard of Fungie, a male bottlenose who has forsaken the open sea to live inside the harbour mouth of Dingle in Ireland, a placid, shallowish inlet bordered by low verdant hills that are speckled with sheep.

Scientists know that American eels spend most of their adult lives inland or close to the shore, because for thousands of years, that’s where people have caught them. And we know the animals spawn in the open ocean, because that’s where we find their tiny, transparent larvae. But despite decades of searching, no adult American eel (Anguilla rostrata) has ever been spotted migrating across the hundreds of miles of ocean between the animals’ adult haunts and their ancestral spawning areas.

On Tuesday, Japan's whaling fleet will set out on a three-month-long hunt for minke whales. The Japanese government argues that this hunt — which will only kill 333 whales, about a third of the average yearly haul before the country's year-long whaling pause — is being done in the name of scientific research. But the U.N.'s International Court of Justice has already deemed the "scientific" program to be anything but.

The coast of southern Chile has become a grave for 337 sei whales that were found beached in what scientists say is one of the biggest whale strandings ever recorded. Biologist Vreni Haussermann told The Associated Press Tuesday that she made the discovery along with other scientists in June during an observation flight over fjords in Chile's southern Patagonia region. The team has been collecting samples since then.

Residents along the east coast of Britain are praying they will not see a repeat of the tragedies seen in Skegness and Hunstanton where six whales have now washed up on the beach. Hundreds of people from all over the East Midlands flocked to Skegness to see three dead whales on Central Beach before they were removed to Sheffield for rendering last Wednesday. A fourth whale that beached of former Ministry of Defence (MOD) land...